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First
Reading: I Kings 19:1-15a The latest Harry Potter movie begins with a wonderful scene, even if it is straight from P.L. Travers’ Mary Poppins. Harry has pretty well learned to ignore the base and petty insults of his nasty aunt, but when the fat, slobbering woman takes to slandering Harry’s parents, he loses his cool and works a spell of her. He simply blows her up, he BLOWS HER UP. Her now lighter-than-air body bumps its way out of the house like an escaping helium balloon and later on in the day we can still see her drifting to and fro over the city housetops. Elijah is a wily, passionate man, a political operative who knows how the game is played in the highest echelons of power. He is normally very much the master of his emotions. However, his party has been on the defensive for a long time. Those who believe that Yahweh demands and deserves the exclusive loyalty of Israel’s king and court have been a despised minority ever since Ahab took his most beautiful and powerful wife, Jezebel. Like a lot of men before and since, Ahab has basically left religious matters in the capable hands of his wife. While he plays golf, Jezebel is methodically teaching his children the joys of paganism. There are many gods, she believes, and she wants the kids to know all of them, particularly those worshiped in the Canaanite culture of her own childhood. She has imported hundreds of priests and prophets to help. Elijah does his best to get the king to pay attention to this matter. It is, he believes, a life-and-death matter for Israel. No one responds, however, and so, one day, inexplicably, he goes off; he takes matters into his own hands. Elijah gives the order the king is too pliant and wishy-washy to give: he has the pagan priests executed by the hundreds. Leaving aside for a moment the heavy-handedness and violence of his strategy, we get to hear in today’s reading what happens to Elijah: When the job is done, he heaves a great sigh of relief and takes a breath that is just long and deep enough for reality to set in. “What have I done?” he thinks. “Jezebel is going to KILL me!” And so he starts to run. At moments like this, when they we see ourselves and our situation more clearly than is pleasant for us, some people sink into depression, some people start behaving erratically, and some start to RUN. Elijah runs all the way into the southern kingdom, into Judah, and he only stops when he is too exhausted to go any further. Like many of the Bible’s heroes, Elijah is deeply and wonderfully flawed. But most of the time, one would not know it. These rare moments when he loses control are very important. They remind him that he is NOT God, and not even well equipped to be a servant of God. The Bible is impressive for its realism about human nature. This is not true of every religious tradition and it is even untrue of some forms of Christianity, which focus so much on getting us to be good that they can obscure the meaning of grace. The ancient name for the notion that there is a silver lining to our falling apart and falling into sin is felix culpa, the fortunate fall that helps us to see how deeply and fully God loves us, that gives God new opportunities to reach out to human beings. Falling flat on our faces CAN be the very chance we need to know ourselves better. It also can rescue us from the kind of denial that allows us to think of ourselves more highly than we should. People who do not know the depth of darkness inside them can be very dangerous. I find it terrifying when President Bush looks into the cameras and says that the recent atrocities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq show us what kind of people we are dealing with—as if they were fundamentally different from good, honest Americans—while at the same time he tells us that the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal was caused by a few bad eggs! Failing to account for the reality of human nature can be a dangerous thing! I have always been one of those who, when Peter Pan asks the audience to chant, “I believe in fairies” is happy to chant along. And it is totally true that you won’t see the fairies and other “little people” who share this earth with us if you don’t look for them and leave a little something out for them to eat once in a while. But if the fairies depend on me for their existence, they are in deep trouble. I am a fair-weather friend. When Horton hear the cries from the miniature city of Whoville, I cheer along with all those who strain to hear them, but—judging by the diffidence of my efforts on behalf of the poor—I would not be nearly as persistent as good old Horton at making their presence known. As I grow older, I love Christmas more each passing year. But if the true meaning of Christmas is, as Bob Cratchett tells it, deep in MY heart, it may not be all we were hoping for. President Bill Clinton’s biography is about to hit the bookstores. Every indication is that he still does not understand why his escapade with Monica Lewinsky is so distressing to us. He calls it an “error of judgment.” Good old Jimmy Carter could have told him the problem goes much deeper than that—and if he could listen, that would be the beginning of wisdom for our brother Bill. Harry Potter gets some very important information about himself when he blows his aunt up. He expects to be put out of Hogwarts Academy as a result, but he is told, basically, that he needs to learn something from the experience and get back to work. The man Jesus finds wandering among the tombs in Gerasa, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, is the IMAGE of where many of us would be without some form of divine intervention--wandering among the tombs, muttering, cutting ourselves on shells and sharp stones. Knowing what we know, we might want to run screaming into the lake with that herd of pigs, but those are just the times Jesus comes along, to bring us back to sanity Jesus asks the man’s name. His name, he tells us, is “Legion.” Luke suggests us this was his name because of the many demons that tugged and tore at him from within. Maybe it was ALSO his name because he is one of millions. Most of us will share his predicament from time to time. Have you had moments in your life when the bottom fell out or reality smacked you in the face and you thought, “I am going to get killed”? Or realized you deserved to “get killed”? Do not seek out opportunities to lose control and allow our fears and failures to overwhelm you! But do not avoid them, either, for such times offer us the chance to see ourselves from a perspective that would be otherwise unavailable to us. And know that wherever our failures take us, Jesus can find us and restore us to sanity. Harry Potter does not have his wizard’s wand taken away. Rather, he is sent back to work knowing that good people are capable of some terrible things—and as in any good story—he quickly gets the opportunity to intervene in several cases of great injustice. Elijah is called out of the cave to a place where the spirit of God can touch him with its “still, small voice” and goes back to his prophetic work, zealous as ever, but mature and chastened, and better equipped to do the work God has in mind for him to do. The man in Gerasa says, “Jesus, I need to come with you!” But Jesus says, “Go home, and tell your countrymen what has happened to you and what you have learned.” I hope the week ahead will NOT be for you one of those times when you have to confront the DARKNESS that is within you. But if it is, do not run screaming into the lake or cut yourself with shells, or sink into depression. Listen for the still, small voice, the “sound of sheer silence”, and know that God can make use of EVEN such unhappy experiences as this. Copyright 2004 Calvary Episcopal Church First
Reading: I Kings 19:1-15a Gospel:
Luke
8:26-39 |
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Harry
Potter and Elijah
